According to Heidegger's Being and Time, social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by Heidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being-with’ by reconstructing Heidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of Kant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, (...) sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that Christine Korsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of Kant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. Heidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how Heidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating Korsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's account of attunement [Befindlichkeit] through mood [Stimmung] is unprecedented in the history of philosophy and groundbreaking vis-à-vis contemporary accounts of emotion. On his view, moods are not mere mental states that result from, arise out of, or are caused by our situation or context. Rather, moods are fundamental modes of existence that are disclosive of the way one is or finds oneself [sich befinden] in the world. Mood is one of the basic modes through which we experience the (...) world and through which the world is made present to us. Moreover, moods are the lenses through which things, people, animals, events, and aspects in the world matter to us. In this paper, I make the case that Heidegger's insights with respect to mood can and ought to be extended beyond the narrow scope of his fundamental ontology in which they were developed. I argue that contemporary accounts of mood within psychology ought to take these Heideggerian insights seriously and use them when defining, studying, evaluating, and drawing conclusions about the nature of moods. There are three sections to my paper. In section 1, I delineate Heidegger's account of mood. In section 2, I turn to some key studies on mood in psychology, and I elaborate upon some of the main shortcomings in this literature. In section 3, I suggest how psychology might benefit from understanding and utilizing a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology of mood. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to the view that Heidegger is unable to account for the possibility of immediately experiencing others in their concrete particularity. Critics have argued that since Mitsein characterizes Dasein’s mode of being regardless of the presence or absence of others, Heidegger has essentially granted it the status of an a priori category. In doing so, they argue, Heidegger reduces the other to a mere interchangeable token whose uniqueness is subsumed under the generality of the established category. (...) In contrast, I argue that the Heideggerian ‘a priori’ must be understood as a living responsiveness to particularity, not a top-down imposition of abstract categoriality. The argument further shows that this responsiveness must be understood in terms of temporal particularity. The bulk of the paper then demonstrates the nature of such responsiveness when it is the temporal particularity of the other Dasein that is being encountered. I show that such encounters are a necessary condition for the possibility of world time and the worldly space of shared significance. Because my encounter with the other Dasein is a direct experience of her originary temporality—the fundamental expression of her concrete care-defined way of being—such encounters are not simple subsumptions of the other to an a priori category. They are, rather, a temporal responsiveness to the unique mode of intuitive givenness characterizing other Dasein. (shrink)

Neste artigo, o autor examina a abordagem da ciência e da técnica que foi apresentada por Martin Heidegger no seu curso de inverno de 1928, intitulado Introdução à filosofia. A tese central examinada é a de que a ciência e a técnica mostram a impotência originária do ente humano. O conceito de impotência é circunscrito pela determinação concreta da transcendência do Dasein, a cujas determinações negativas acrescenta-se, ainda, aquela que resulta da interpretação ontológica do conceito de jogo.In this paper the (...) author examines Heidegger's account of science and technology, that is presented in Winter course of 1928 Introduction to Philosophy. The main examined thesis says that science and technology display the primordial impotence of human being. The concept of impotence is circumscribed by the concrete determination of transcendence of Dasein, to which negative determinations adds, yet, that resulting from the ontological interpretation of concept of game. (shrink)

The Early Heidegger’s Philosophy of Life: Facticity, Being and Language offers an interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of facticity as it is articulated in connection with the ideas of life and language in the lecture courses from 1919225. The book argues that facticity is both the source of vitality for theory and a source of deception and falsehood and therefore cannot be viewed in either positive or negative terms exclusively, but must instead be viewed as ambiguous. This essay argues that this (...) basic thesis is correct and is supported by drawing a distinction between everydayness and inauthenticity. It is also argued that the analysis of language the book offers can be useful in clearing up misunderstandings of Heidegger’s concept of discourse in Being and Time. (shrink)

Sandra Lee Bartky criticises the account of meaning contained in Heidegger’s ontology in Being and Time. In her view, Heidegger must choose between the claim that meaning is received and the claim that it is created, but is unable to do so. This paper argues that Bartky’s criticism is misconceived, by showing that meaning, as Heidegger understands it, is necessarily both created and received. According to a number of influential commentators, the ultimate source of meaning is das Man – Heidegger’s (...) con ception of the social world. This paper initially considers, but ultimately rejects, the view that the source of meaning, as Heidegger presents it, is social. Instead, this paper argues that meaning is rooted in what Heidegger calls ‘letting be’. Letting be articulates a distinctive relationship between the human being and entities. This relationship, it is argued, accommodates the notion of meaning as both received and created, by reconstituting these terms within a context that defines the human being as an interpreting entity, therefore showing that letting be should be understood as the ultimate source of meaning in Heidegger’s ontology. (shrink)

Pippin's accusation that Heidegger's account of modernity and the History of Being are pre?Critical or dogmatic can be rebutted by understanding Heidegger's later writings more thoroughly in terms of his earlier and by requiring Heidegger to modify the texture, though not the philosophy, of his narrative. Heidegger's thesis that epochal transitions in the History of Being are contingent and inexplicable can be rendered consistent with Critical epistemology, whose central thrust is to deny the Myth of the Given, by understanding the (...) inexplicability involved to be rational inexplicability, not hermeneutic. To explain this suggestion, it is necessary to turn to some of the conceptual resources of Being and Time. The History of Being can thus be seen as both hermeneutically intelligible and contingent. For this to be possible, however, Heidegger's tendency to present that History as a series of monolithic shifts that cannot be bridged by any account of the motivations that drive history forward must be resisted. Heidegger's narrative of modernity is too abstract, but not pre?Critical. Pippin's argument that it is dogmatic is based on an undefended, rationalist assumption. (shrink)